It seems I’m having a London Underground kind of week… When people ask me what my favourite version of the London Tube Map is, I always show them this. By 1961, Harry Beck was no longer responsible for producing the Tube map, it having been forcibly passed on to Harold Hutchison. However, more out of hope than anything else, he continued to produce new mockups of the map which he passed on to London Transport […]
Yes, I know I said I wasn’t going to post until the New Year, but I couldn’t wait to show this exciting new map of transit in Kiev, Ukraine. This beautiful diagram was designed by Igor Skliarevsky in his own time, simply because he was frustrated with the limitations and design of the official map. As he says on his website (pardon the Google Translate from Ukrainian), “As a designer, I find it difficult to […]
File this under “A” for “awesome”! Here’s Zone 1 of the London Underground map made entirely from drinking straws. I particularly like the use of striped straws to simulate the double-stroked DLR and Overground lines from the real map. Clever work from artist Kyle Bean, who has heaps of amazing work on his website. Source: Kyle Bean
New York is continuing its time in the spotlight here at Transit Maps with this brand new subway map by designer Alex Koplin. Looking for all the world like the love-child of the Vignelli diagram and the current MTA map, this is a seriously impressive piece of work that a lot of thought has clearly gone into. I know from experience how difficult it can be to reinvent something that people are familiar with, and […]
Related to the parabolic map of the Moscow Metro, here’s a unique take on the Washington, DC Metro – as a spiral. A visually compelling image, and great at showing links between routes, but not actually that useful as a map. Have we been there? No. What we like: Amazingly creative way of re-imagining the system. Looks fantastic! Shows links between routes at transfer stations very effectively. What we don’t like: Absolute lack of geography […]
Now this I like. This map takes Moscow’s famous Circle Line and straightens it out completely: all other lines then attach to it parabolically (becoming curved when before they were represented as a straight line). Great work, even if not that practical for real-world use. Source: bifurcafe/Flickr – link no longer active
Further to yesterday’s post, here’s a new unofficial map of the Paris Metro that’s been hot on the interwebs over the last few days. Unlike the official RATP diagram, this version places all the stations in their exact geographical locations, although I suspect the route lines have been tweaked between those points to create more graceful curves than in reality. Also unlike the official map, it doesn’t attempt to show tram services or mainline train […]
Older transit systems like the London Underground face huge problems with access for disabled users. Originally constructed at a time when such things were not thought about, retrofitting is expensive and difficult. Sometimes, even stations that rely on elevators for platform access – like Russell Square on the Piccadilly Line – are still not wheelchair-accessible, because there’s still a flight of stairs between the elevator and the platform. So what does the London Underground look […]
This is possibly the best transit diagram I have seen submitted to Wikipedia. Lovely, minimalistic design with bright, eye-catching colours and good typography. No geography at all, which is actually appropriate for a heavy rail system like this – used most by commuters who travel the length of their line from their home station (on a spoke) to the city (hub). Have We Been There? I’ve been to Boston, but haven’t travelled on the commuter […]
This is it. My final take on a redesigned Washington, D.C. Metro Map. This is my third major revision of a project that began in February of last year, and won the People’s Choice Award in the Greater Greater Washington “Redesign the Metro Map” contest earlier this year. I’ve taken time away from this diagram to work on a few other projects recently, but the release of Lance Wyman’s draft diagram has inspired me to […]
